What Is Going On.

I feel like you deserve an explanation.

I am not a quitter.  When I commit to something, I do it. Blogtember seemed totally doable. Having said that, I was recently offered the opportunity to go to St. Louis for an NCAA Umpire Camp on Sept. 21 & 22.  When I accepted, I thought I would go an wing it with the skills I have developed in my 3 years of learning & working the game.  Oh boy, was I wrong.  In the past week, veteran umpires have told me: "Camps are not to learn. Camps are for strutting your stuff in front of Division 1 game assigners."  and "You need to study the 3-man system and know it by heart. Know the NCAA rule book by heart. If you don't, and you go to camp, it'll be immediately obvious to everyone that you did not study and you do not belong there. They will cross your name off the list."  and "If you study and know what you are doing, you could skip years of baby-step development and your career could be launched into some incredible territory immediately."

I'm an ambitious lady.  I also don't like to look stupid...especially in a highly critical context such as NCAA games.  So, needless to say, these past two weeks have taken a right turn.

I did get some sage advice that these are my priorities:
1. Family
2. Full time job
3. Umpiring

That means that I need to grade student tests tomorrow during work. I need to leave the school day tomorrow with Monday AND Tuesday lesson plans completely ready to go. I have a sub Friday. Those plans need to be completely ready to go.

Oh, and I'm in a graduate class.  I just got assigned a shit load of homework that is due Tuesday on top of existing literacy projects that are in the works.

Oh, and I'm training for a half marathon that is exactly one month from tomorrow.  I need to run 10 miles on Friday.

I can handle this, but the blog is not a place where I can go to play right now.  My apologies.  Please send me good vibes this weekend. Lots of pressure.  I swear this seems harder than being a student athlete. I'd rather be asked to hit a pinch hit home run (been there, done that) than study hundreds of pages worth of field mechanics and then maybe or maybe not be able to execute it in action.